Mapping Center

I was recently asked to lend a cartographic hand to a project my agency is working on. I work for OregonMetro (the Metropolitan Planning Agency in the Portland, Oregon area) and among other things, we are charged with planning the future of the region. One of the facets of the planning program involves helping the 25 cities in our jurisdiction collaboratively plan for future growth. We have identified 39 urban centers and we defined a list of urban amenities that have been shown to have a positive impact on residential pricing and convenience or family-oriented amenities. These include the following: Read More...

One of the first and best rules in cartographic design is to beg, borrow, or steal good design. Many good ideas have already been had, and there's no point in ignoring them. 

Today, I got a note from one of our senior folks in sales and marketing at ESRI who had been rightfully accosted by one of our customers over some maps that appeared in an ESRI brochure called Government Matters. Several pages in there are a series of U.S. county level demographic maps with Alaska and Hawaii un-artfully integrated into northern Mexico. 

How would I have solved this problem? Read More...

Last week we received a request for blog entry on a 3D effect we could provide for displaying building footprints using cartographic representations. The most common, and simplest effect is to add a drop shadow like what is shown in the image to the right. Read More...

Buffer vignettes symbolize the interface between two areas. They are often used to show the land-water interface by gradually fading blue at the coast into white or vice versa. You can also use them to fade the map out into a white background. These types of vignettes are created using buffers that are symbolized in a special way.

Note -- as described this only works on white backgrounds. See the two examples at the end to see how the data frame's background can be coordinated with the buffer vignette for different effects on along coastlines. Read More...

I just posted a newly updated Hillshade toolbox on the ArcGIS Resources – Models, Tools & Scripts page. This replaces the toolbox of the same name that was there earlier. The new toolbox includes: Read More...

When cartographers talk about "optimizing a computer display", they're usually talking about how to see things better, i.e., remove fuzziness, ensure all the information is shown, etc. This contrasts with how computer technology folks use the term "optimize", which usually means make the screen display draw faster. Read More...